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School

University of Toronto Scarborough

Department

Anthropology

Course

ANTA02H3

Professor

James Stinson

Semester

Summer

Description

Lecture 1
What is Culture?
st
 1 writing assignment=linguistic anthro. 5 pg double spaced essay response
 exams are multiple choice
 Conservation in belize, central America
o 94 terrestrial and marine protected areas which cover 36% of
terrestrial and 13% of marine territory
o this is what the prof did his research on
o present day mayan ppl
o impact of oil exploration and conservation on indigenous ppl
 4 sub-fields in anthropology
o biological
o archeology
o linguistic
o cultural
 cultural anthropology is the study of human society and culture, the subfield
that describes, analyses, interprets, and explains social and cultural
similarities and differences. It is particularly concerned with exploring
cultural adaptation
 wheras biological anthropologists explore how humans evolve and adapt
biologically, cultural anthropologists focus on cultural adaptation
 all humans share certain bio features and engage in similar biological
processes (eating, sleep, have sex) but the way they do these things differ
 all humans share similar bodily functions, physical needs but the way we go
about doing these things around the world diversifies
 sullens argues that its culture that determines how we go about using our
bodies and how we live our lives. Its culture that played a role in creating the
physical body that we have right now
o “the imp point is not that all cultures have sex, but that all sex has
culture, that is, social norms that specify with whom, how, where, and
when sex relations are appropriate or inappropriate. Culture
preceded modern human physical form by million yrs or more. The
body of the modern human species, homo sapiens, was formed under
the ageis of culture. These needs had to be subordinate to and
encompassed by their cultural forms of expression, otherwise how
could the same needs or dispositions be realized in the thousands of
different ways known to history and ethnography-the various cultural
ways of having sex, eating, being aggression, and the like?”
 As Clifford Geertz put it, we “all begin with the natural equipment to live in a
thousand kinds of life but end in the end having lived only one” that can only
be if our natural dispositions were subject to cultural ordering rather than
the source thereof o There are thousands of ways we can live in the one, but each of us
have 1 culture. The fact there is a lot of cultures shows us that it is our
culture that makes us unique
 Rate of cultural adaption rapidly accelerating during the last 10K yrs
 Food production: cultivation of plants and domestication of animals
developed 12K-10K yrs ago
o Lowered death rates and increased growth rates
 First civilization developed 6000-5000 BP (before the present)
 Spread of industrial production and take-off of population
 One of the primary goals of anthro is to make the strange familiar and the
familiar strange
o Anthro is about learning about other societies that may be strange
and thinking critically about what is familiar to us such as our own
way of life and culture. Look at our culture is other ppls eyes
o Cultural anthropology developed historically as the study of “Other”
(non-European) cultures (making the strange familiar)
o It has also served to help Europeans question and think more
critically about their own societies and cultures (making the familiar
strange)
 What is culture
o Latin: cultura-“cultivation”
o European usage began in 1700-1800s
o Implied process of improvement or betterment of the individual,
especially through education. Improving oneself
 E.G.=The European Grand Tour. The elite young men travel
around Europe visiting cultural sites like rome, learning about
these cultures
o Those with culture were deemed “civilized”
o Those lacking culture were seen as uncivilized and living in a state of
nature
o Non Europeans originally viewed by Europeans as lacking “culture”
(civilization)
 Euros thought that non euro didn’t have the capacity to be
civilized. Euros saw culture in what made them different from
others
o “Culture is that complex whole which includes knowledge, belief, art,
morals, law, custom, and any other capabilities and habits acquired by
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